Bethesda officially joins Xbox family, some exclusives planned for the future

Only a day after news arrived of regulatory approvals, the combining of ZeniMax Media with Xbox has been made official by Microsoft. The Xbox ecosystem now has eight more first-party game development studios, them being Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, ZeniMax Online Studios, Arkane, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog, and Roundhouse Studios.

While the heads of the two gaming giants did not make any new game-related announcements today, they did share separate blog posts regarding the journey so far and teasers about what"s to come.

"With the addition of the Bethesda creative teams, gamers should know that Xbox consoles, PC, and Game Pass will be the best place to experience new Bethesda games, including some new titles in the future that will be exclusive to Xbox and PC players" said Xbox Head Phil Spencer. This is probably hinting towards upcoming experiences like Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI being Microsoft-platform exclusives.

Bethesda"s Pete Hines had this to share regarding the merger:

"As we’ve all shared, the expectation is that Bethesda Softworks and our studios will continue as we have in the past, just with more support and resources than we’ve ever had before. Obviously, Game Pass has been an important initiative for Xbox, and we’ll be working on putting even more of our games into Game Pass than ever before. Beyond that? Stay tuned, we’re just getting started together."

Finishing the announcements off, Phil Spencer added that the Xbox Game Pass subscriptions are expanding later this week with another round of Bethesda games, with more details coming soon.